David W. Bulla focuses his research on the history of journalism, examining limitations on press performance. He concentrates on nineteenth-century newspapers, particularly the U.S. Civil War. His first book, Lincoln’s Censor, was published by Purdue University Press in 2008. Dr. Bulla and Gregord A. Borchard had their book Journalism in the Civil War Era published by Peter Lang in 2010. Much of his research has been devoted to the Peace Democratic journalists of the Civil War. He also does research on international and scholastic journalism topics.

In 2006, he was co-author of a paper that received the top faculty award from the Scholastic Journalism Division of the Association for Education in Journalism (AEJMC).  He is a frequent contributor as a book reviewer to several scholarly journals, including Journalism History and American Journalism, as well as H-Net Book Review in the Humanities and Social Sciences, which is Web-based.

He authored book chapters on the Penny Press, freedom of the press in Civil War Indiana, and novelist-historian Shelby Foote. He is a member of AEJMC and the American Journalism Historians Association. At ZU, Dr. Bulla is adviser of the Student Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and teaches reporting. 

He earned a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of Florida, an M.A. in journalism from Indiana University, Bloomington, and a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Before moving to the UAE, Dr. Bulla taught at Iowa State University for seven years.